The Dalai Lama is a cisgender man – yet he has an unexpected connection to the trans community

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, turns 90 this week – a milestone that’s reigniting speculation over his eventual successor.

While the Dalai Lama is the face of Buddhism to many people across the world, he is actually the head of just one tradition within Tibetan Buddhism known as the Gelug school.

Tibetans believe the Dalai Lama to be the manifestation of Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, and the “one who hears the cries of the world”.

Read more: What is a bodhisattva? A scholar of Buddhism explains

Avalokitesvara is prayed to across Asia, and is known as Chenrezig in Tibet, Guanyin in China, and Kannon or Kanzeon in Japan.

In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a person, or a mythic representation of a person, who denies themselves enlightenment until all beings can achieve enlightenment. Avalokitesvara appears to living beings in whatever form could best save them.

Although Avalokitesvara originated in India as a man, they can be depicted as either a man, woman, or non-binary being. This gender fluidity has led to them being revered as a trans icon in the West.

I have spent the past five years investigating the lives of queer Buddhists in Australia. As part of this research, I have surveyed and interviewed 109 LGBTQIA+ Buddhist Australians.

The words of these individuals, and my own experience as a genderqueer Buddhist person, reveal how the Dalai Lama emerges an an unlikely inspiration for individuals sharing a trans and Buddhist identity.

Letting go of binaries

Through my work I have found LGBTQIA+ Buddhist Australians are generally reluctant to disclose their queer identities to their Buddhist communities, and may be told to remain silent about their identities.

For some, Avalokitesvara’s gender fluidity has been important for reaffirming both their queer and Buddhist selves.

One Buddhist trans woman, Annie*, told me Guanyin had special significance for her. Annie spoke about Avalokitesvara travelling from India to China as a male, before “transitioning” to the mainly female presentation of Guanyin over centuries. Annie said:

I pray to her regularly and often find I get a response. Of course the enlightened state is beyond all manner of worldly binaries, including gender, and is immensely important in letting go of binaries in my journey towards enlightenment.

Walter* has had a long fascination with depictions of Avalokitesvara that “showed ‘him’ looking effeminate and handsome, with a cute moustache […] A little bit homoerotic, a little bit provocatively gender fluid, as seen through my eyes”.

Walter adds:

A great many people in different cultures, across history, worship these figures. Clever how this figure can morph into a radical trans! We all want to feel comforted, safe and saved from suffering.

As queer Buddhists, we turn to to Avalokitesvara to feel “comforted, safe and saved”.

Another interviewee, Brian*, told me about a Tibetan invocation practice he did with a senior Tibetan monk, in which he encountered Guanyin:

[She] took my right hand and passed some sort of power into it. She never spoke to me but just returned the way she had come. I was given some sort of gift, that’s all I know.

Since this experience, Brian has “always felt a strong connection to the feminine through her”. He has a special Guanyin altar on his farm.

You can’t be what you can’t see

Some Buddhists deny Avalokitesvara’s queerness.

Asher*, a genderqueer Buddhist I interviewed, told me about a teacher who said to them, “there was absolutely no way a gay person could be enlightened”.

Asher retorted:

What about Kanzeon, the bodhisattva of compassion, who has manifested as both male and female and, in the stories from Japan, has had erotic relationships with monks?

The teacher dismissed this, replying, “those are just stories”.

In her 1996 book Transgender Warriors, trans activist Leslie Feinberg writes: “I couldn’t find myself in history. No one like me seemed to have ever existed.”

Similarly, Annie evoked the statement: “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

I, too, experience this need to see myself as a genderqueer, non-binary practitioner of Zen Buddhism. It was only through doing these interviews with other queer Buddhists that I came to realise Guanyin, a trans icon, is a statuette which adorns the altar of the Buddhist group I belong to.

Knowing Avalokitesvara may be depicted as a man, woman, or non-binary being lets us queer Buddhists know we exist – and have always existed – within Buddhism.

Despite being a cisgender man who has been somewhat inconsistent in his support of queer people, the Dalai Lama, as the manifestation of the bodhisattva of compassion, is a possible spiritual link between today’s queer Buddhists and centuries-long traditions of gender transition and fluidity.

*Names have been changed.

Stephen Kerry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.